Every city loves community spirit, and San Antonio is no stranger to street celebrations with the spring and summer Fiesta’s that bring thousands of participants. But along with the people, comes trash…roughly 80 to 100 tons of trash collected from it’s two biggest parades alone. This is why the city adopted a new “Don’t Trash Fiesta” recycling initiative!

Like any good green-minded organization, the City Council put on it’s green cap and passed a new law requiring city events attended by more than 1,000 people, must get Green Event Certification. In past years, about 7 tons of recyclables have been collected at “green” Fiesta’s.

As part of the green event initiative, event volunteers will enroll the support of parade-goers to help collect recyclables. Officials are urging Fiesta participants to designate one person in their group as the designated recycler (kinda like the designated driver). The city will help collection by providing yellow mesh bags to the “green guru” in the group.

Once the event is over, the bags full of recylables, can be handed to an event volunteer.

What a great idea, and a great way to enroll the audience to support green event initiatives!